ENGLISH SUMMARY*
of the work by Wladyslaw Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko
GENOCIDE COMMITTED BY UKRAINIAN NATIONALISTS
ON THE POLISH POPULATION OF VOLHYNIA
DURING WORLD WAR II (1939-1945)

I. The monumental work of
Wladyslaw Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko (father and daughter) on Ukrainian
genocide in Volhynia during World War II is like the tome of some voluminous,
as yet non-existent work on the totality of the genocide committed against
the Polish population during those years. Poles were subjected to genocide
- in various forms and on varying scales by the Germans, the Soviets, and
the Ukrainians. The German and Soviet genocide is relatively well known
and documented. Genocide perpetrated by the Ukrainians, on the other hand,
is much more of an unknown as yet. It was not limited to the territory
of Volhynia (and a part of southern Polesie), but extended to the whole
of Eastern Galicia and even part of south-eastern Poland, well into its
present post-Yalta borders. But it must be remembered that the lands of
Volhynia were the scene of the first onset of genocide by the Ukrainians
against the Poles, resulting in a much higher number of murder victims
than was the case in the territories of the individual former provinces
of Eastern Galicia (the provinces of Tarnopol and Stanisławów and the eastern
part of the province of Lvov)1.
For this reason the authors did right to concentrate on Volhynia.

The concept of genocide, and the
term for it, were created in the early forties by the Polish lawyer Raphael
Lemkin (1901-1959). Lemkin spent the thirties as assistant public prosecutor
of the District Court in Brzeżany (Tarnopol province), followed by delegation
to an equivalent post in Warsaw, and later hecoming a barrister, as well
as lecturer of the Free Polish University there. Already before the war,
he was interested in the issue of genocide, termed by him at that time
as "acts of barbarity". He managed to reach the United States in 1941 and
published his breakthrough work- Axis Rule in Occupied Europe -
there in 19442. He
was also instmmental in the adoplion of the fundamental international treaty
in the field of genocide: The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide, approved by the General Assembly of the United
Nations on 9 December 1948. Because of this, he was to be nominated twice
for lhe Nobel Peace Prize3.
The provisions of the Convention, which has been ratified by the great
majority of nation states, must be looked upon today as being ius cogens,
in other words such as cannot be overturned (as opposed to ius dispositivum)4.
At the same time, the crime of genocide is writlen into the majority of
national penal codes5.

In accordance with article II of
the Convention: "genocide means any of the following acts commilted with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group, as such", using various methods: the first being, of course,
"killing members of the group" (art.ll, item an). This is followed by items
b/ to e/: "b/ causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c/ deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d/ imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group; e/ forcibly transferring children
of the group to another group". It must be clearly said, here, that Ukrainian
genocide against the Poles is characterized by several aggravating circumstances.

Firstly, it encompassed, in
principle, the most speedy possible physical extermination (murder) on
the spot of all the Poles that could be reached, regardless of age
or sex6. In this respect
it is comparable only to the German genocide against the Jews - not their
genocide against the Poles7.
Concerning the Jews it must be added that in theirextermination in the southeastern
border provinces of the Polish Republic, the Ukrainians not only took a
very big part in all the acts of genocide, either in conjunction with the
Germans or independently under German supervision8,
but also perpetrated similar acts on their own. This already happened in
the summer of 1941, as the German armies wereentering the then Soviet - occupied
territory9. Later,
after having liquidated the ghettoes together with the Germans, that is
mainly after the second half of 1942, the Ukrainians continued to capture
and murder individual Jews who had been in hiding10.
All these "actions", it must be kept in mind, were connected with pillage
on a huge scale of the victims' properly11.

Secondly, Ukrainian genocide
was characterized as a rule by tortures of the utmost barbarity. These
reached back to the Cossack traditions of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries
(the Khmelnitsky Uprising12
and the uprising of 1768 called "kolistchyzna"13),
with the methods in use at that time - hacking Poles and Jews with axes,
throwing wounded victims into wells, sawing people alive, horse-dragging,
eye-gouging, pulling out of tongues, and other atrocities14.
Such acts of barbarity were not as a rule employed by the Germans or even
the Soviets. Of course there were beatings and frequently bestial cruelty
during interrogations15
or in concentration camps (where this was accompanied by starvation and
backbreaking work, sometimes criminal medical experimentation in German
camps, etc.), but it was not usual for the murder thal took place there
to be combined with the cutling off or pulling out of parts of the body,
sawing, ripping open of the stomach, disembowelment, and so on16.

Let us add that on a European scale,
as far as dreadful tortures go,the genocide commitled by the Ukrainians
on the Poles is only comparable, to a certain extent, to the Croatian genocide
(by the Ustasi of Ante Pavelic) against the Serbs during World War II from
the spring of 1941. However, what was also practiced there on a big scale
were mass expulsions, or "conversion" to Catholicism, which meant that
a large majority of the Serbs who were within the boundaries of the Croatian
state formed in April of 1941 (with acceptance by Germany and Italy) could
survive17. But in
the case of the genocide by Ukrainians, the practice was to murder absolutely
all the Poles who fell into their hands. The fact is that despite the fabrications
of the Ukrainians, there were no "calls to leave" Volhynia directed at
the Poles, or simple "deportations". This is totally debunked by the Siemaszko
work. Quite the reverse, it was very often the case that Poles who wanted
to run away before the genocide already being committed in neighbouring
districts reached them were encouraged to remain, with "guarantees" that
they would be safe. Or they were subjected to threats that their running
away would be considered as treason against lhe Ukrainians. All this was
aimed at ensuring that they would all be killed right where they were.
This aspect will be pursued later.

Thirdly, the German and Soviet
perpetrators were different. German genocide was carried out entirely by
"specialized" criminal formations in uniform, in particular the socalled
Einsotzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei or the SD (Sicherheitsdiertst),
and the Soviets used NKVD troops. This was not how it was with the Ukrainian
genocide. The crimes there were committed by two major elements. Dominating
the scene were the Ukrainian Insurgent Army of Stefan Bandera and, in Volhynia,
the competing forces of Bulba and Melnik as well as the Ukrainian police
set up by the Germans in the latter half of 1941 (which deserted in early
1943). But in major genocide operations, there participated thousands upon
thousands of local Ukrainian peasants, including the so-called Kushtchov
Self-Defence Unils (Somooboronni Kushtchovi Viddily), oslensibly
peasant "self-defence" unils which were in fact used by the Ukrainian Insurgenl
Army to assist in genocide against the Poles. Added to this were bands
armed with axes, pitchforks, etc., often composed of neighbours, who formed
a kind of Ukrainian levy in mass. As if this were not enough, these bands
were often accompanied by Ukrainian women, youths, and even children, who
busied themselves with looting, on a massive scale, arson and finishing
off of Poles who had been wounded but survived18.
This took place despite, at times, years of supposed mutual friendship,
or bonds of gratitude that had existed towards certain Poles19.

It is for this reason that I would
qualify the genocide in Volhynia during World War II as being clearly Ukrainian
genocide, and not, for example, genocide committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army, the Bandera bands, Ukrainian nationalists and so Forth. Contrary
to what is often claimed by Wiktor Poliszczuk in his publications (he is
later quoted highly favourably in this Summary), the genocide in Volhynia
- as is documented by the Siemaszko work - was carried out by a broad spectrum
of Ukrainians from that area and not only by the "fighters" of the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army. As was already mentioned, there took pari in it thousands
and thousands of ordinary peasants (often forced into it by the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army), including unfortunately, hordes of greedy women, adolescents
and even children at times.

However, it must be made clear that:

The claim is not being made that the
majority of Volhynian Ukrainians participated in the genocide and the acts
that accompanied it, especially as the genocide against the Poles had to
be limited, generally, to the countryside (urban areas being firmly held
by German garrisons); nevertheless, a significant segment of the Ukrainians
of Volhynia were involved. And so the facts alone, as well as the exigency
of honesty, demand, or at the very least allow, that we speak in this case
about Ukrainians as such, just as the president of Germany, Roman Herzog,
quoted later on, does not restrict himself to speaking of crimes committed
by the Nazis, etc., but of the crimes of Germans tout court.

At the same time, we must express the
greatest respect for those Ukrainians who, as is well attested to by numerous
examples to be found in the Siemaszko work, aided the Poles by warning
them, hiding them briefly, or transporting them to the nearest town. For
help of this kind the fanatics in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalisls (especially the notorious Security
Service of the OUN, or Slushba Bezpeky OUN) oflen punished their
own compatriots by killing them. But all that help was, unfortunately,
only a drop in the ocean in the face of the tens of thousands of Poles
murdered at that time.

Fourthly, special mention must
be made of the viciously criminal stance taken in cases of mixed Polish-Ukrainian
marriages. In such cases the Ukrainian assassins often murdered, wherever
possible, whole families, including the children, or, at least, the Polish
partner. Not only this, but there were instances where the Ukrainian husband
(or even the wife) was forced to kill the Polish partner with his own hands20.
Such barbarity was never applied in similar cases of mixed marriage, by
the Soviets21, or
in the case of mixed German-Jewish marriages by the Germans. Among these
latter, despite the almost total Ausrottung of the German Jews,
most of these couples, though severely persecuted and forced into starvation,
nevertheless managed to survive the war22.

A characteristic example of this
would be the well-known case of Prof. Karl Jaspers, who was married to
a Jewess. The couple lived for the years of the war in a tragic state of
Suizidbereitschoft (readiness to commit suicide), but neverlesess
survived23. Ordering
a German man or woman to kill his or her Jewish pariner was unthinkable.

Fifthly, in the case of German
or Soviet genocide against the Poles, the crimes were committed by an occupying
force - whereas the genocide by Ukrainians was conducted by Ukrainians
who were citizens of Poland, inhabitants of these lands during the II Polish
Republic, who did not display even the slightest vestige of loyalty24.
But, let us add, when there was profit to be gained by it, these same Ukrainians
continued to refer readily to their Polish citizenship25.
In many cases, using identification documents robbed from murdered Poles,
and under their names, they "repatriated" to Poland, or went abroad to
the West26.

Sixthly, Ukrainian genocide
was usually accompanied by a barbaric scorched earth policy. After their
property and livestock were robbed, the houses and other buildings of the
killed Poles were usually burnt down (sometimes even their orchards were
destroyed), and public buildings, eg. schools, were also often destroyed.
As part of this, there was also total destruction of a large number of
historical Polish country houses, with their farm buildings and gardens,
as well as Catholic churches and chapels27.
This form of additional barbarism was not usually demonstraled by either
lhe Germans or the Soviets28.

Finally seventhly, the Germans
have long admitted to their crimes, and have apologized for them publicty.
To take one example, the president of the Federal Republic of Germany,
Roman Herzog, staled clearly in his speech in Warsaw on August 1st, 1994
at the ceremonies to do with the 50'th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising:
"I bow before the fighters of the Warsaw Uprising, and before all the Polish
war victims. I beg forgiveness for what the Germans did" (emphasis
by R.S.)29. Russian
president Boris Yeltsin also had it in him to make a few gestures, as when
he kissed monsignor Zdzislaw Peszkowski on the hand and whispered the words
"I apologise" on the occasion of paying tribute to the victims of Katyn
on August 25Ih, 1993, at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw. That evening,
the whole of Poland saw it on television30.
As well, the press and literature in Germany, and, for the last ten years,
in Russia, openly discuss the genocide committed against the Poles. The
behaviour of the Ukrainians, on the other hand, has been, as a rule, completely
different: they have resorted to silence, denial and oulright lies. This
aspect will be further discussed below.

To sum up section I: Ukrainian genocide
committed against the Poles during World War II surpassed German and Soviet
genocide in certain respects: it was marked by the utmost ruthlessness
and barbarity, and, upon its completion, up until the present day, it has
been denied or, at best, presented with reminders that all is "relative"
or other such evasions.

II. The former province of
Volhynia, which was the scene of Ukrainian genocide focussed upon by the
authors, was an area which was inhabited before 1940 by around 350 thousand
Poles, who made up barely 17% of the population. That percentage was further
reduced by mass deportations during 1940-1941 by the Soviets. Total loss
of life among the Poles at the hands of the Ukrainians is estimated by
the authors at between fifty and sixty thousand. But it must be stressed
once again that independently of the genocide against the Poles, the Ukrainians
participated absolutely everywhere, either with the Germans or alone, in
the genocide commitled against some 200,000 Volhynian Jews, citizens of
Poland. This issue has also been raised in the present book, although this
very broad subject is not strictly speaking its theme31.

The work examines methodically the
territories of all the eleven regions of the former province of Volhynia
- from the Bug River as far as the Polish-Soviet border of 1939. Within
the regions, note is made of rural communes, 103 in all, as well as the
municipal communes, and then the fundamental base - the about 1720 individual
villages, settlements, colonies, etc., where it was possible to establish,
most often in an incomplete way, that genocide had been committed on the
Poles. In addition to this, note is made with regard to the administrative
units (villages, colonies, settlemenls, etc.), forming part of each commune,
where Poles also lived, but about which it was not possible to oblain any
information - about 1790. However, as the Ukrainian genocide against the
Poles was perpetrated methodically and globally in 1943 throughout all
the regions of Volhynia, from east to west, and was clearly guided by the
top OUN-UPA leaders, there is not the slightest room for any illusions
that the blank spots about which information could not be gathered were
some kind of untouched areas. On the contrary, it must be taken as a given
that in the majority of these places, the Poles who had not managed to
escape or to put up effective resistance were subjected to genocide just
like their compatriots in places where the acts of genocide could be documented.
And so the authors were correct in giving cautious estimates for those
areas. Let us add that they do not avoid the delicate issue of the rare
Polish reprisals against the Ukrainian perpetrators, when the devaslated
relatives of their brutally tortured kinsmen attacked Ukrainian villages.
As Prof. Tadeusz Piotrowski rightly says on this subject32,
"Indeed, it would be surprising if there had been no such retaliatory measures".
And Wiktor Poliszczuk states: "(...) although there were acts of retaliation
by the Poles (...), their reach was a drop in the ocean as compared with
the mass murders of Poles that the OUN and UPA allowed themselves"33.

The authors have made use of an impressive
range of sources. The list include accounts written by witnesses to the
crimes (almost 1,700), the files of investigations of the crimes committed
by the Ukrainian nationalists, court decisions in actions to declare their
viclims as deceased, and entries in the death registers of Roman Catholic
parishes. lt goes on to include the secret documents of Ihe Polish Underground
Government covering the period of German occupalion during 1941-1944, Soviet
and nationalisl Ukrainian documents, and very numerous memoirs and wrilten
studies, including those by Ukrainians. There are also about 80 accounts
by witnesses of the genocide, and other documents, which are included,
mostly in exrenso, in the Annexes and are of great historical importance.
Taken as a whole, this work sets a standard which should be followed by
further works on the genocide against the Poles in Eastern Galicia34,
which also urgenlly requires documentation.

III. It should be noted how
this extremely barbaric Ukrainian genocide against the Poles has been treated
in Ukrainian and Polish-Ukrainian official declarations, and in Ukrainian
and Polish wrilings.

A. We have mentioned the declarations
regarding the genocide their own countrymen were guilty of that were made
by the presidents of Germany and Russia. The Ukrainians have not made any
such gesture yet. The highly publicized "joint statement by the presidents
of Poland and Ukraine on agreement and reconciliation", made in Kiev on
21 May 1997, declares in its preamble that "the future of Polish-Ukrainian
relations should be build upon truth and justice". It only mentions in
half a sentence the evenls in Volhynia: "we must not forget the Polish
blood shed in Volhynia, especially during the years 1942-1943 (...)". It
makes no menlion at all, as it goes on, of similar Polish loss of life
in Fastern Galicia, while its reference to "Operation Vistula" of 1947
seems to juxtapose situations that are completely different. In that operation,
dictated by a state of national exigency (the necessity of depriving the
UPA of its logistical base, which was supported entirely in its day-to-day
functioning by the local Ukrainian population, which could ensure that
the UPA would be provided with quarters, food and manpower for years ahead),
there were no elements of genocide. These Ukrainian peasants were resettled
to farms which were available in the new ex-German territories that Poland
obtained according to the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, incidentally much better
than the ones they left behind. Summing up, the statement of 1997 does
not solve the fundamental issue of acknowledgement on the part of the Ukrainians
that genocide had been committed, and does not contain any expression of
apology to the Poles35.

As for the stance taken by the upper
levels of the clergy of the Greek-Catholic Church, which has taken, in
the present day, the rather pretentious and ethnocentric name of Byzantine-Ukrainian
Church, suffice it to quote the pronouncement of the high-ranking clergyman
Stefan Dziubina from Przemysl. In his homily at celebrations on 11 May
1997 in Jaworzno, he spoke of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army as "Ukrainian
self-defence against the Poles", who, in his words, "committed murder and
burned down Ukrainian villages in Volhynia, giving in to Nazi agitation,
in face of which the Ukrainians armed themselves and began to attack both
the Germans and the Poles''36.
This pronouncement, which could not have been made without the approbation
of the head of the Greek-Calholic Church in Poland, was made in the presence
of, among others, the presidents of Poland and the Ukraine37.
This same clergyman gave a sermon on 7 July 2000, on the occasion of the
interment of members of the UPA in Pikulice (killed in action in 1946)
in the outskirts of Przemysl, that was completely mendacious, calumnious,
and inflammatory38.
Polish public opinion was aroused, but nothing was done. As we already
wrote in this connection a few years ago: "We consider that such public
falsification of fundamental historical truths, steeped in moral implications,
should be punishable in our country, just as so-called Auscheuirzluge is
punishable according to the penal code of the Federal Republic of Germany...
"39.

From among the lay Polish Ukrainians,
a certain R. Drozd has come forth in recent years with a publication on
the UPA, consisting mostly of "carefully selected" documents and brief
introductions40. The
work is strikingly mendacious, with such passages as: "The Polish-Ukrainian
conflict in 1942/43 fumed into a Polish-Ukrainian partisan war of its own
[!], lasting until 1947, which took in its wake lens of thousands of victims
on both sides. (...) In my view the numbers of casualties suffered by each
side will be very close". No other Ukrainian has come forward so far with
such a supreme fabrication. It is an UPA-Luge par excellence. Further
on, Drozd attempts to twist the facts as follows: "It is of course difficult
to indicate here which was the attacking side, and which was on the defence,
as attack was countered by attack, murder by another murder, looting by
more looting, arson by further arson, and all of it was justified on the
grounds that it was a retaliatory operation. It can only be taken for granted
that the attacking side were those forces which were stronger, in any individual
area (...)".The actual facts are different. As Drozd must well be aware,
the Polish minority in the countryside in Volhynia was the weaker force
almost everywhere (and so, even according to him, it must have been the
Ukrainians who were attackers). But more than that, the Poles were totally
unprepared for attack when the UPA launched its acts of genocide. This
is very fully documented in the Siemaszko work. Only very limited acts
of self-defence could be organized, and the Poles could retaliate only
in a very few instances.

B. As for Ukrainian historical
writings, these are, in the vast majority, steadfast in not admitting that
any genocide was ever committed against the Poles by the Ukrainians in
World War II. This is not the case with Germans and the Russians41.

The total falsification in this field
was set in motion immediately alter World War II by Mykola Lebed', who
was himself the chief instigator of Ukrainian genocide against the Poles
(as he carried out the responsibilities of S. Bandera, who was incarcerated
at the time by the Germans, under unusually good conditions, in the Sachsenhausen
camp). He wrote a book on the UPA that was published as early as 194642.
Lebed' notes that it was a big blow for the Germans when the whole Ukrainian
police force, and the so-called Ukrainian Schulzmen, went over to the UPA
forces at the beginning of 1943 in the whole of Volhynia and Polesie. Of
course, he fails to mention that it was the same police that took such
a big part in genocide against the Volhynian Jews, or that it had succeeded
in killing off a great number of Poles earlier. He goes on to say that:
"The Germans suggested to the Poles that they form a Polish police force
in its place. Among the Polish population of Volhynia there were many who
had a blind hatred, historically, for the Ukrainian nation, and who went
over to serve Germans. (...) Out of these Polish units, the Germans formed
separate punitive police detachments, which distinguished themselves by
committing the greatest and most brutal murders and widespread looting
of the Ukrainian population. (...) Historical Polish hatred for the Ukrainian
nation was reaping its victims. (...) Urged by the former governments of
Poland to colonize the Ukrainian lands, and brought up in the spirit of
chauvinism and blind hatred towards everything Ukrainian, the Polish population
of Volhynia and Polesie was once again being successfully put to the test.
It must also be mentioned that Bolshevik partisan formations were receiving
a certain amount of help and information from Polish settlements about
the Ukrainian independence movement. So it is not surprising that the people
lost their patience. (...) They switched to self-defence and paid back
for all the grievances that had built up over the centuries. To prevent
spontaneous mass anti-Polish acts of aggression and forestall conflict
between the Ukrainians and the Poles, (...) the Ukrainian Insurgent Army
strove to draw the Poles into a united struggle against the Germans and
the Bolsheviks. However, when this failed to bring any results, the UPA
gave the Polish population the order to leave the Ukrainian lands in Volhynia
and Polesie. (...) In the summer of 1943, almost the whole of Volhynia
found it self under the control of the UPA. The Poles, who had received
the order to leave the territory, usually carried the order out voluntarily.
Ownership of their landed property went over to the Ukrainian people. This
brought to an end the existence of Polish settlements created after 1920,
such as all the places named after Sienkiewicz, or some Ludwik, etc. (...)".

Let us review, as briefly as possible,
these fabrications by Lebed'.

1). Making Polish "punitive police
formations" accountable for "the greatest and brutal murders", committed,
moreover, even before the Ukrainian genocide (because such is the sequence
of events presented by Lebed'), goes totally against the evidence to be
found in the Siemaszko work, and in other serious Polish works.

2). As for the Poles being brought
up in a spirit of chauvinism and blind hatred towards "everything Ukrainian",
the situation was quite the opposite: as is confirmed by the hundreds of
accounts presented in the Siemaszko work, there were good relations, at
times leading to friendship, intermarriage, etc. between the Polish and
Ukrainian populations in Volhynia in the pre-war period. The two groups
lived on good terms until relations were totally ruined during World War
II by the campaign conducted on a huge scale by agitators, for the most
part Galician members of the OUN and UPA, who propagated an extreme form
of chauvinism among the Ukrainians that was nothing short of genocidal.

3). The fabrications noted above
were, however, essential to Lebed', so that he could launch his cardinal
untruth:namely, that it was the Poles themselves, who brought on the bloody
actions of the Ukrainians. In self-defence, provoked, according to him,
by acts on the part of the Poles, the Ukrainian people only "paid in kind
for all the wrongs against them that had built up over the centuries".
The form this "paying in kind" took is not specified, but it is nevertheless
clear that this is a veiled attempt to "justify" the Ukrainian genocide
against Poles who were almost totally defenceless.

4). Further on, rather unexpectedly
and as if wishing to minimize the extent of the "Ukrainian retribution
for everything", Lebed' produces further lies as to how the UPA tried to
draw the Poles into common battle against the Germans and the Bolsheviks,
supposedly "in order to forestall a spontaneous mass action against the
Poles". In reality, there were no such genuine attempts to make the Poles
join in, apart from the treachery of luring them out in order to murder
them43.

5). As for the alleged "order by
the UPA" that the Polish population leave the territory of Volhynia, this
was never given - as is demonstrated in the Siemaszko work. Quite the contrary
- the Poles were perfidiously encouraged to stay put, and even given written
guarantees, so that they could be murdered when the time was ripe. What
is more, any such "order" would in itself have been a criminal act of lawlessness.

6). Lebed's boast that allegedly
"almost all of Volhynia" was in the hands of the UPA by the summer of 1943
is a further fabrication. The fact is that the cities and most of the small
towns of Volhynia were then still occupied by German garrisons (and also,
in part, by their allied Hungarians), and it was precisely thanks to this
that thousands of Poles managed to save themselves by taking refuge there.
The "concrete" information given by Lebed' as to the UPA forces' having
allegedly managed to capture the district town of Horochow in south-western
Volhynia is also totally fabricated44.

7). Lebed's claim that the Poles,
having received the "order" to leave the territory, "usually carried out
this order voluntarily", is a complete invention. The reality was that,
as is once again shown by the Siemaszko work, some people sought safety
in flight, not always successfully, to cities and small towns when slaughter
was an imminent threat, and the Ukrainians were already there with their
bullets, knives and axes.

8). The passing over of lhe Poles'
"landed property" into "ownership by the Ukrainian nation", that is mentioned
by Lebed' (quite apart from the fact that such "nationalization" by the
UPA would have been an act of complete lawlessness), took the form of barbaric
buming down of Polish houses and outbuildings by the UPA bands, so that
all that remained as a rule was the denuded land itsetf. This is documented
in the Siemaszko work. At the same time, Lebed' passes over in silence
the whole question of the enormous amount of other property owned by the
Poles that was simply carted off by thousands of Ukrainian men and women.
All lhis, too, is well documented in the present work.

9). Finally, there is also a calculated
falsification of the facts in Lebed's satisfied remark that there ceased
to exist "the Polish settlements created after 1920, such as all the places
named after Sienkiewicz, or some Ludwik, etc." This formulation allows
him to pare down the issue of all the thousands of Poles murdered, and
homesteads bumt down, to the specific "Polish settlements" which came into
being afler the Treaty of Riga of 1921. But the fact is that these "settlements"
made up only barely a small part of the Polish rural homesteads that had
existed in Volhynia for generalions. Even the Ludwikowka mentioned by Lebed'
(commune of Mlynov in the Dubno district) was an old Polish seltlement
of this type.

To sum up this topic: almost directly
after the wide-scale Ukrainian genocide committed under the leadership
of Lebed' against the Poles in Volhynia, this same criminal prepared and
published a highly mendacious publication, attempting to deny that the
genocide had ever taken place. These lies, modified to some extent, are
still being used, at least in some of their aspecls, by the majority of
Ukrainian historians, as well as the Greek-Catholic clergyman mentioned
above, or recently, for instance, the Polish author R. Torzecki (see below).
Let us add that Lebed', a former Gestapo trainee, who after the surrender
of Germany in 1945 hid in Rome wilh the help of, among others, ceriain
Greek-Catholic ecclesiastical dignitaries from the Vatican, established
fairly quickly cooperalion with the CIA. In 1949 he was admitted as a CIA
"expert" on the basis of "no questions asked" to the United States, where
he lived, absolutely undisturbed, until his death in 199845,
whereas his deeds would classify him for a death sentence in the immediate
post-war period.

Let us now have a look at the "History
of the Ukraine" by J. Hrycak, "director of the Institute of Historical
Research at Lvov University", newly published in a Polish translation46.
Hrycak writes, among other things, about the "(...) Volhynian massacre"
- the bloody mutual ethnic cleansing that thousands ot peaceful inhabitants
fell victim to on both sides". We go on to read, among other things: "This
was the bloody clash of two nationalistic groups, each harbouring a long
list of mutual wrongs and hatreds. Neither side in the conflict was either
wholly innocent or wholly guilty". It is striking that Hrycak, in writing
about the numbers of Poles murdered, notes that "professional Polish historians
estimate the number of victims on the Polish side at sixty to a hundred
thousand people (out of which around fifty thousand came from Volhynia),
and on the Ukrainian side at roughly three times less" (which would make
it around twenty to thirty thousand!)47.
And so the Ukrainian genocide on the Poles was presented as a "bloody mutual
ethnic cleansing" (emphasis by R.S.), a kind of "fratricidal conflict",
- or, as it is called by ceriain other Ukrainians - "a civil war", or even
a "Polish-Ukrainian war" (sic!) 48.
One could just as well, as Prof. Piotrowski aptly remarks, speak of an
"undeclared German-Jewish War"49.

Similar attitudes are held, in higher
or lesser degree, by various Ukrainians taking part in the Polish-Ukrainian
historical seminars that have been held since 1996 on the subject of "Polish-Ukrainian
relalions during the years of World War II"50.
These Ukrainians (just like the above quoted J. Hrycak, who does not participate
in these seminars) usually speak in one voice of a two-sided Polish-Ukrainian
massacre, claim to have their doubts as to who instigated it, operate in
untruths, failing to support their theses with proof, etc. A systematic
critique of the first four seminars in the series was given by W Poliszczuk51.
Commenting on a statement by one of the Ukrainian discussants, he formulates
the following general remarks: "Almost every senlence, every statement
made not only by this discussant, but also by the other Ukrainian participants
in the seminar, would demand a fundamental polemic, saturated as they are
with propaganda, lies and distortions". In certain Ukrainian publications,
there appear, in addition, highly provocative demands for a revision of
the present borders with Poland, gross and irresponsible accusations and
insults against the Poles, and so on52.

A valuable exception is to be found
in the 270 page work of the Ukrainian professor Witalyi Maslowskyi, published
in Ukrainian, in Moscow, entitled "With Whom and Against Whom the Ukrainian
Nationalists Fought in the Years of World War II"53.
The author bases himself partly on archival sources, and partly on other
writings, mainly Ukrainian and Polish. In the last chapter of his work
he cites Poliszczuk (further discussed below) many times with the greatest
approbation, and this whole chapter is in fact given the title "The OUN
and UPA as seen through the eyes of the Ukrainian Wiktor Poliszczuk". He
brings to light and condemns the genocide committed against the Polish
population in Volhynia and Fastern Galicia. At the same time, he condemns
the dangerous activities of the post-UPA nationalists in present-day Ukraine,
taking place not only in Lvov, but even in Kiev, "Galician fundamentalism"
and other such phenomena54.
Also criticized by him are the promoting of the totalitarian and genocidal
doctrine of the Ukrainian Dmytro Dontsov (1883-1973), the erecting of monumenls
to the SS-men of the 14 th Ukrainian SS. Division "Galizien" (the "Halytshina"),
the OUN and UPA leaders E. Konovalec, A. Melnyk, S. Bandera, R. Sukhevich
and others, and the glorifying of the murderers of Poles, Jews, Russians
and Ukrainians as national heroes of the Ukraine, after whom streets and
squares are named, awaking the spirit of the Dontsov and Bandera era, so
much hated by people"55.

It must be added here that Prof.
Maslowskyi was murdered in Lvov in October 1999 by supposedly unknown perpetrators,
who were in reality clearly criminal post-UPA fanatics, a fact that is
reminiscent of similar assassinations by the OUN in pre-war Poland, and
by the UPA in later years56.

Also truthful and valuable are certain
articles published in two Ukrainian journals in Volhynia in the nineties
- the "Dialoh" (in Rovno) and "Spravedlyvist" (in Luck). In the first of
these, for example (no 49, December 1993), there appeared an article under
a title that speaks much: "The Tragedy oF Volhynia: Genocide against the
Polish population. Documents bear witness".

The writings of Ukrainians published
in the West, mainly North America, are similar, with minor exceptions,
to those of authors in the Ukraine, like Hrycak. One example of such writings
suffused with that spirit is the series Litopys UPA, published for many
years now in Toronto57.
The Ukrainian historian 0. Subtelny, who works in the United States, writes,
for example, as follows about the genocide in Volhynia58:
"According to Polish sources, around sixty to eighty thousand Polish men,
women and children were massacred by the Ukrainians in Volhynia in the
years 1943-44. (...) The Ukrainians claim that massacres of their own countrymen
began prior to that, in 1942, when the Poles annihilated thousands of Ukrainian
peasants in the regions of Chelm (Khelm)59,
inhabited mostly by Poles, and that they continued this in the years 1944-45
against the defenceless Ukrainian minority to the west of the San. It is
clear, anyway, that both the Ukrainian and the Polish armed units engaged
in total bulchery, which found a vent in the bloody apogee of hatred that
had been growing between both nations for generations". From this, one
could draw the conclusion that it was the Poles who started a mass murder
of the Ukrainians, and that this led later to a form of civil war between
armed units of both sides.

An exception worthy of the highest
acknowledgement are the numerous publicalions of Wiktor Poliszczuk, well
known in Poland. He is himself a Ukrainian from Volhynia who has lived
for the last twenty years in Canada. He is a PhD in political science of
the University of Wroclaw, and often visits Poland 60. From among his works
that interest us in particular let us nole the following: 1) The Bifter
Truth. The Criminal Character of the OUN-UPA; 2) Mislead Polish
Historians; 3) A Political and Legal Assessment of OUN-UPA,
in three languages61;
4) The Ideology of Ukrainian Nationalism According to Dmytro Dontsov62;
and 5) Integral Ukrainian Nationalism as a Form of Fascism (two
volumes: 1998 and 2000)63.

Mention should also be made of the
memoirs of Danylo Shumuk, who served as a "politruk" in the UPA and later
spent many years in Soviet camps: Life Senlence. Memoirs of a Ukrainian
Politicaf Prisoner (Edmonton 1984), where he speaks critically about
the murdering of Poles64.

As far as Polish works of the nineties
go, a few minor publications have appeared, dealing with the genocide against
the Poles in Volhynia. These are mostly collections of documents (especially
the accounts of witnesses, representing valuable documentation)65,
or works related to Ukrainian genocide in specific districts or even communes
in Volhynia66. Not
one of these, however, even approaches the scope of the Siemaszko work.
None of them are as complex in character, or display the same depth of
research or wealth of sources as this work, and none of them could be viewed
as being definitive. This latter aspect is raised towards the end
of this Summary. There is also a journal, "Na Rubieży", which appears in
Wrocław, that fulfils an important role in providing documentation67.
On the other hand, there are several professional historians who offer
half-truths or outright lies, aimed at passing in silence over facts that
unequivocally weigh on the Ukrainian side, or trying to provide it with
some form of alibi. These works found their inspiralion, il would seem,
in the spirit of the monthly "Kultura" published under the late Jerzy Giedroyć
in Paris. Another influence would be the so-called political correctness
imported from the United States, totally absurd in this context, and resulting
in falsifications of the truth. The idea trumpeted about in Warsaw after
1990 on Ukraine being Poland's "strategic partner" (a doubtful thesis that
cannot. be discussed here for lack of space) should not, however, prevent
unmasking and condemning the Ukrainian genocide committed over half a century
ago.

We should mention here, among other
publications, those of W. Serczyk68
and T. Olszariski69,
and, from among the more recent ones, those of H. Dylągowa70,
as well as the most recent brief article of R. Torzecki, which is full
of outright fabrications in
the field that interests us. One is shocked,
in that text, by the following passage71
"One often hears that the confrontation was a planned action by the Ukrainians,
who wished to rid themselves of the Poles by murdering them off, of which
we do not have any proof to this day (!). The Ukrainians took the decision
to remove the Poles from the disputed territories by ousting them, and
not by murdering them (!). It was only when this did not succeed, and the
Poles did not want to leave the territories, that force was resorted to
(!)".

Do we really "not have any proof",
as is claimed by Torzecki, that the Ukrainians had carefully planned the
genocide committed against the Poles? We can refer, in this context, to
the collective work, edited by Wladyslaw Filar, in which he bases himself
on a document from the archives of the Security Service of the Ukraine
in the Volhynia region which contains a secret directive from the territorial
UPA-Piwnicz command, signed by "Klym Savur" (Roman Dmytro Klachkivskyj)72.

The eminently planned character of
the crimes is definitively confirmed by the Siemaszko work. The course
of the systematic genocide that took place in Volhynia in the summer of
1943 is documented in great detail, showing that it was carried out in
accordance with one and the same plan of action, and embraced large areas
at regular time intervals, with the result that the "cleansing" of the
Poles in Volhynia was implemented month by month, in a westernly direction.
Further, there remains the question, already raised in connection with
the fabrications on the part of Lebed', as to the legal and moral basis
under which the Ukrainians allegedly "look the decision [!] to remove the
Poles" from land where they had lived, for the mosl part, for generations,
"by ousting them" (!). The questionable point is the alleged "ultimatum",
which would have been totally counter to the law, around which lies are
being spread by the Ukrainian side to this day (at the lll Polish-Ukrainian
historical seminar in Luck in 1998, for example, the Ukrainian historian
Roman Strilka claimed that "in Volhynia the Polish population were informed
that they must leave for the other shore of the Bug River, within 48 hours,
otherwise they would be subjected to annihilation"). Well, no such "ultimatum"
was ever given in Volhynia, as is documented in the Siemaszko work. Quile
the reverse actually happened, as the Siemaszkos prove, with, in a great
number of instances, the Ukrainians treacherously advising the Poles not
to flee, under the theory that "nothing threatened them", and sometimes
even giving them "guarantees" in writing (!). There were times when they
told them that flight would simply be treated as treason (!), or even lured
the Poles who had fled, for example, to places like Krzemieniec, into returning
to the countryside, where those who came back in good faith were murdered.

Finally, to look at Torzecki's claim
that it was only when "the Poles did not want to leave the territories"
that "force was restored to". Even this latter was formulated in such a
way as to give the impression that it could mean only ousting by force!
The question also arises, as to the reasons why they were supposed to set
out on a path of poverty and maltreatment at the demand of bandits? Where
concretely were they to go under the German occupation? It is in this shamefully
twisted fashion that Torzecki wrote of and summed up the genocide of fifty
to sixty thousands Poles of Volhynia.

Many authors from this group simply
propound, to a greater or lesser degree, and with pretensions of scholarship,
the "pragmatic" postulates of the former vice-president of the Seym of
the III Polish Republic, Aleksander Malachowski. At the "Congress of Ukrainians
in Poland" in 1997, he declared: "Uncovering the truth about history is
like reopening of old wounds, and we must heal wounds (...)"73.
All this is taking place at a time when the Ukrainian genocide is still
remembered to this day by many Poles from their own terrible personal experience74.

IV. To sum up: the Siemaszko
work documents in an excellent way the entire course of the Ukrainian genocide
against the Poles of Volhynia during the years of the Secend World War.
In its field, it constitutes what is often termed in the Anglo-Saxon world
as adefinitive work - a work that is fundamental in its complete,
in-depth and objective treatment of the subject examined. Certain supplementary
additions here and there will be of course, necessary in the future, as
will be small corrections in places. But the subject has, in principle,
undergone exhaustive investigation, and the correct conclusions have been
drawn.

Henceforth, no one - with the exceplions
of notorious spreaders of falsehood - will be able to have slightest doubl
as to who was the instigalor of the genocide discussed here. No one will
be able to continue concocting the legends on how, in Volhynia, the Ukrainians
allegedly first "only" demanded that the Poles "voluntarily" leave the
territory, and no one will be able to bypass the gross lawlessness that
even such lower level of criminal action would have represented. There
will be no room for further questioning of the facts behind the premeditated
and strikingly barbaric Ukrainian genocide perpetrated on the Poles of
Volhynia, who made up less than 17 percent of the population, and were,
moreover, almost totally defenceless. And finally, no honest person will
continue, even in carelessness, to term the events of Volhynia which interest
us here as a "civil war", "fratricidal conflict", "clash of two nalionalism",
"Polish-Ukrainian war", etc.

The Siemaszko work, which is the
product of over ten years of research, is a comprehensive, fundamental
study within the scope of the subject undertaken, realized on a scale hitherto
unmet with in Poland in the given field. A considerable gap has been filled
in the history of Poland at the time of World War ll in general, and in
the history of the genocide committed on the Poles in that period in particular.

There emerges a picture which, taken
as a whole, is one of a particularly bestial form of genocide, to which
the guilty side refuses, so far, to admit. The Ukrainians have not, so
far, followed the example of the Germans or even the Russians, who officially
admitted to the genocide they had perpetrated. The Ukrainians have adopted,
rather, the "Turkish way", - for the Turks, as is known, do not want to
admit, to this day, to genocide committed in the years of World War I against
roughly one and a half million Armenians 75. Official sources in Turkey
have kept their silence on the subject for whole decades. It was only when
young Armenians began to assassinate Turkish diplomats in the sevenlies
and eighties (the victims were, among others, the ambassadors in Vienna,
Paris, the Vatican and Belgrade, as well as consuls and others) that a
significant Turkish "publicity counteroffensive" in the media and the press
was launched 76. The assassinations had ostensibly been intended to "remind
the imperialistic Turkish government of the crimes committed against the
Armenian people". The "publicity counteroffensive" has tried to present
the events of the year 1915 and the years following as a tragic "civil
war", instigated, moreover, by the Armenian minorily (a strange similarity
to the Ukrainian (alsehoods regarding the events in Volhynia!). Use is
also made of formulations such as: "No violence, no terror in the world
will make us beg forgiveness for a crime that was not committed" (!)77.

Today, Armenia, newly free, does
not hesitate to speak openly of the genocide committed at that time. It
has brought it up, for example, in the United Nations78.
She also appeals to Turkey for direct talks to resolve the issue79.
What is more, the Armenian genocide has been publicly condemned by several
foreign parliaments, on November 8th 2000 by the French Senate80
(in 1998 by the French National Assembly), and earlier by the Greck parliament,
the Belgian Senate and, on April 14th, 1995, by the Russian Duma. But the
consecutive governments of the III Polish Republic are simply afraid to
touch upon the subject of the Ukrainian genocide - for reasons of the alleged
"strategic partnership", indicated above.

Finally, one is struck by the absence
of any manifestation of a principled, honest attitude towards the genocide
we are discussing on the part of any of the Ukrainian intellectual elite,
in particular the writers or the scholars. Let us recall that the pride
of German literature, Nobel prize-winner Thomas Mann, after mentioning
in his novel "Doktor Faustus" that a certain "transatlantic" (i.e. North
American) general had ordered, in 1945, that the inhabitants of Weimar
file by the crematoria of the concentration camp there, wrole, among other
things81: "Is Ihe
sense of guilt quite morbid which makes one ask oneself the question how
Germany, whatever her fulure manifestations, can ever presume to open her
mouth in human affairs?".

Or let us consider the future German
Nobel prize-winner Gunter Grass, who already as a young man, fell under
the strong influence of the work published in 1951 by the distinguished
philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno82,
and always strongly condemns the German genocide committed during World
War II. It came to the point where, as the issue arose in 1990 of the unificalion
of the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany, Grass came out against
it. His argument was that it was a united Germany (the Reich) that had
organized genocide and conducted it. He spoke of the experience that "we
the criminals, with our victims, had as a unified Germany", and Auschwitz
as "a permanent stigma of our (i.e. German) history", etc83.
He alluded to these statements again in 200084.
We often came across similar, more or less strongly articulated posilions
at universities in Germany. There is no trace of anything similar to this
on the part of the Ukrainian intellectuals who have evidently not grown
up to the role that intellectual elites play in other societies85.

The Siemaszko work is therefore all
the more needed and valuable. It is deserving of the widest dissemination
not only in Poland, but also in the Ukraine and in Estern Europe generally.
It should, also, enjoy broad promotion in the West, including careful use
being made of it in the emerging discipline of comparative genocide86.

As far as the moral aspect is concerned,
seen especially from the Polish perspective, there can be no forgiveness
for this genocide either for those who committed the mass tortures and
then perpetrated the murders, or for those Ukrainian "scholars" and even
clergy who lied on this subject during the decades following, right up
until the present, and continue to do so, offered all kinds of halftruths,
consciously confusing the facts, claiming that all is relative or making
a demonstration of keeping silent.

But in the end the truth must out,
on the part of the Ukrainians as well: DUCUNT FACTA VOLENTEM, NOLENTEM
TRAHUNT. It will simply not be possible to falsify this genocide.

Prof. Ryszard Szawlowski, LL.D.
November 2000

* Instead of a text written especially
for this English Summary, the authors are offering a translation, with
some minor additions and abbreviations, of Professor Richard Szawlowski's
Polish Preface to their work. It gives a concise picture of the Ukrainian
genocide against the Poles in Volhynia (part of the II Polish Republic)
during the German occupation of that territory (1941-1944). Between fifty
and sixty thousand Poles (and about two hundred thousand Jews) were murdered
in cold blood, regardless of age or sex. This genocide, marked by the most
barbaric tortures applied to the victims, seems to be all but unknown in
the West, and is blatantly falsified by most of the pertinent Ukrainian
publications that have appeared in English, Polish and Ukrainian during
the last fifty-odd years. The present work gives,
as far as available sources permit, a minute picture of the course of that
genocide. Professor Szawlowski puts the facts in the broader context of
what is referred to as comparative genocide. This leads to the conclusion
that the Ukrainian genocide perpetrated on the Poles was, in many reapects,
the worst among all acts of genocide committed during World War II. For reasons of space,
the eighty-odd footnotes to the Polish Preface have not been translated.
However, for readers of this Summary who may wish to refer to the Polish
text, the footnote numbers which appear in the main body of the original
Polish version have been retained. Some twenty of them, incidentally, quote
literature or information in English, German and French.

Article
from the book "Genocide Committed by Ukrainian Nationalists on the Polish
Population of Volhynia During World War II (1939-1945)" by Wladyslaw Siemaszko
and Ewa Siemaszko, Warsaw 2000.